Save a snowball now, name your price later

With snow on the ground and snow in the forecast, it's time to get ready for Carnegie Science Center's annual Snowball Day. Bundle up, put on some warm gloves or mittens, and go out there and make snowballs.

All visitors who make a snowball this winter, save it in their freezer, and bring it to the Science Center on the first day of summer, Thursday, June 21, will be able to choose what they pay for general admission that day. In addition to naming their own price, visitors will be able to launch their snowballs into the Ohio River, weather permitting.

In past years, hundreds of snowballs have survived the winter and spring in freezers throughout the region and made their way to the Science Center-in coolers, freezer bags, frosty coffee cans, and plastic storage containers.

The Science Center invites visitors of all ages to start stockpiling snowballs now for this Summer Solstice celebration, and remember these snowy facts:

• Snow forms from tiny crystals in clouds. Snow is not frozen rain; that's called sleet.

• Most snowflakes melt before reaching the ground.

• No two snowflakes are identical.

• Each snowflake is made up of two to 200 separate crystals, on average.

• Although it appears white, snow is actually transparent. Snow crystals act as prisms and break up the Sun's light into the entire color spectrum. The human eye can't handle that kind of sensory overload, so it is processed as white. If a region's soil contains more iron, giving it a reddish tinge, snow may appear pink-wind will blow dirt and dust into the atmosphere and clouds, where the snow crystals form initially.